There is a significant industry that relates to the design and preparation of high end stationery and custom invitations. One of the most difficult and tedious problems that is faced by businesses in this custom business is the manual mounting of paper on top of other paper as hand-made invitations are designed and assembled. The same difficulties are faced by businesses lining up photographs or other artistic pieces on a backing piece of paper or other thin material.
Custom invitations may typically have at least three mounts, and order quantities may range from a few dozen to several hundred invitations depending on an event and client. This manual mounting process is very time-consuming and, if the assembler is not skilled, can result in a large expense as the paper can be wasted during assembly. To perform a mount, a top piece of paper is pre-glued on its back side. It is then held over a bottom piece until the assembler believes that they have the placement correct. If an assembler is very steady and a bit lucky, the assembler can place the top piece of paper dead-center the first time. Regardless of the placement, the two expensive pieces of paper are glued together essentially as soon as they touch.
Creative people work very diligently to create unique and beautiful products. The invitation business complicates this by necessitating the duplication of an agreed upon model. Ideally, this model must be replicated perfectly multiple times. Unfortunately, to manage quality, the necessity of replication means that the creative person must move from creativity to redundancy, effectively becoming a factory worker for the time it takes to assemble an item multiple times.